


one (plural)

by indefensibleselfindulgence



Category: Drag-On Dragoon | Drakengard
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 19:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19752184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefensibleselfindulgence/pseuds/indefensibleselfindulgence
Summary: It's easy to listen to his sister.





	one (plural)

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to the dude who shows up in the game for five minutes and then drops everything to start a cult 
> 
> route a

“Kindness is a luxury we can not afford.”  
  
It's easy to listen to his sister, because his sister knows so much and is so smart and wonderful. It's easy to smile and nod and pick up the sword and the spear and the knife and drive the blades true in the practice dummies she lines up for him. It's easy to imagine a monster on the other end of them. It's easy to imagine a pale massive monster with skin that's translucent and eyes that are dark and hair that is as pale as the marble walls of the cathedral he is raised in.  
  
It is easy because One holds his hands and shows him and tells him again and again and again.  
  
“One day, Zero will come here. One day, if you do not kill her, the world will end. That's all you have to do. That's all you were made to do.”  
  
It's easy because he's never seen Zero.  
  
He lays in his bed in the hidden tower and tries to imagine her, his older sister. A monster so horrifying even One is scared of her. He prays to One that when that Thing comes to take his real sister away that he'll be able to drive whatever falls under hand through her chest as many times as it takes.  
  
The practice dummies are replaced for humans.  
  
One watches from the side of the wall as he gets beaten down and as he picks himself back up and grips the handle of her chakram and caves a solider's head with it. He wants nothing more than to turn and see a smile on her face and hear praise, but then another solider tackles him to the ground, knocks One's weapon out of his hand.  
  
He cries out as the solider tugs his hair roughly and smashes his head into the marble.  
  
He kicks and screams and shoves his fingers through the helmet until something wet caves under his fingers and the body on top of him stops moving.  
  
There's red on his robes.  
  
He thinks he likes it.  
  
He thinks he likes the way it looks against his skin and his hair and his eyes. The way it looks against One's skin and hair and eyes.  
  
She ushers him into a bath once they are all dead by his hand and tells him that she's proud. Just this once, and that he should work hard on making his sister proud again.  
  
He promises that he will, even when the dirty robes are burned and he never sees them again.  
  
One demands he fight her.  
  
He doesn't want to, more than anything he dreads her being hurt, so he misses his strikes and those he lands he lands softly. She calls him weak, and he does not mind being weak if it means he's not hurting her.  
  
He has nightmares of Zero arriving, after her looking like they do.  
  
One has told him before, Zero is different, Zero is a monster, Zero is an abomination, a grotesquery, a broken part of the world, and that when he puts her down, he will be a hero. But the nightmares still come, and he can't drive a blade true if he has to hurt One.  
  
One demands he fight her, One demands he make her blade, and thinking about it hurts him. Hurt her? He wouldn't, couldn't, but then if she tells him to do something, doesn't he have to? He was made so that One's life would be easier, so that One could make everyone happy and so that everyone would be alive.  
  
One made him to kill a monster.  
  
“If you can't hurt me, then what good are you? If you can't hurt me, you think you'd be able to hurt her? If you can't hurt me, you think she's spare your feelings when she rips me apart?”  
  
It's easier to hurt her then.  
  
There is red on their robes.  
  
He smiles at her, where she struggles to stand, and she smiles back, and everything makes sense again.

As long as One is happy, as long as One is happy, as long as One is happy.  
  
Zero comes on a quiet afternoon.  
  
The sun is out, and there are pretty white birds on his windowsill. He walks down the long, spiral staircase that leads him to the main chamber of the cathedral.  
  
Kill the monster, make One happy.

It's easy.  
  
He hears her, ranting to her dragon, but it's so hard to make out words once he sees her body bent and broken on the floor.  
  
It's easy, to pick up a sword and drive it through the monster's chest.  
  
It would have been easy even if she did look like them.  
  
He prays to One that One would be proud.  
  
His robes are red.  
  
He keeps them like this.  
  
It's easy to pretend to be his sister, after it's all over. He can sing well enough, and he knows how to swing the chakrams she always carried at her side. When she was busy ruling, she left him with books to read, to learn what to do. He didn't have a dragon, but Gabriel died so close to One he's sure it's what they both would have wanted.  
  
It's easy to be her because that's what he always was anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always encouraged and very very very appreciated
> 
> find me on[ tumblr ](http://iamalivenow.tumblr.com/) and [ twitter](https://twitter.com/licotain)


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